Youth Drama Festival: Plays reflect society’s various taboos
Week-long performances continue at PNCA.
A scene from the play, Meri Kahani, which was the staged on the fourth day of the festival. PHOTO: EXPRESS
ISLAMABAD:
Unlike the first couple of performances at the week-long Youth Drama Festival, a play attempting to highlight how people are vulnerable to superstition failed to impress the audience.
The play, ‘Devta’, was performed by members of the Preston University Theatre Group at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA). It started off on a monotonous note, with a group of jungle-dwellers devising a plan to rob villagers in their neighbourhood.
With black symbols painted on their faces, men wearing yellow gowns and women in white robes chanted mantras.
Rooted in age-old traditions of individuals worshiping semi-gods, semi-devils and self-proclaimed deities, the theme was a little too philosophical for most audience members.
Based on an original script by university student William Pervez, the play depicted the power that superstitions have over people, how some people interpret different situations as good or bad omen and how they often manipulate these beliefs for their own vested interests.
The large cast of actors seemed to lack coordination. Some were too slow to deliver dialogues or be coherent, while others attempted to crack jokes to illicit audience response.
The props, dresses and makeup could have been more convincing with better acting and comic timing. An upbeat music played through scene transitions, but did not seem to complement the performance.
Opening in a jungle setting, the play showed a tribe leader, ‘Devta’ coaxing his subordinate jungle dwellers to submit before him, thus controlling and herding them against the naive villagers in the neighbourhood.
In the end, it was about yin and yang, black and white and good versus bad, which people attach too much meaning and power to, instead of using common sense and taking necessary action.
Women’s rights
Unlike the previous plays, “Meri Kahai”, staged at the fourth day of the festival, highlighted the subject of women’s rights.
The cast was a combination of students from different universities but the main characters were from Quaid-i-Azam University.
“The play is very close to my heart. It depicts the everyday struggle of a woman who steps out in pursuit of education or employment. It talks about the reality that even in this age, a woman still lacks the stature that is her right,” writer and director Malik Jasim Abbas said
Yusra Ambreen, a student of NUST, who plays the lead character of Maryam and has previously acted in plays at her university, said she felt “honoured to be portraying a real Pakistani woman, who puts up with enormous pressure from society and her own family,” she said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 8th, 2015.
Unlike the first couple of performances at the week-long Youth Drama Festival, a play attempting to highlight how people are vulnerable to superstition failed to impress the audience.
The play, ‘Devta’, was performed by members of the Preston University Theatre Group at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA). It started off on a monotonous note, with a group of jungle-dwellers devising a plan to rob villagers in their neighbourhood.
With black symbols painted on their faces, men wearing yellow gowns and women in white robes chanted mantras.
Rooted in age-old traditions of individuals worshiping semi-gods, semi-devils and self-proclaimed deities, the theme was a little too philosophical for most audience members.
Based on an original script by university student William Pervez, the play depicted the power that superstitions have over people, how some people interpret different situations as good or bad omen and how they often manipulate these beliefs for their own vested interests.
The large cast of actors seemed to lack coordination. Some were too slow to deliver dialogues or be coherent, while others attempted to crack jokes to illicit audience response.
The props, dresses and makeup could have been more convincing with better acting and comic timing. An upbeat music played through scene transitions, but did not seem to complement the performance.
Opening in a jungle setting, the play showed a tribe leader, ‘Devta’ coaxing his subordinate jungle dwellers to submit before him, thus controlling and herding them against the naive villagers in the neighbourhood.
In the end, it was about yin and yang, black and white and good versus bad, which people attach too much meaning and power to, instead of using common sense and taking necessary action.
Women’s rights
Unlike the previous plays, “Meri Kahai”, staged at the fourth day of the festival, highlighted the subject of women’s rights.
The cast was a combination of students from different universities but the main characters were from Quaid-i-Azam University.
“The play is very close to my heart. It depicts the everyday struggle of a woman who steps out in pursuit of education or employment. It talks about the reality that even in this age, a woman still lacks the stature that is her right,” writer and director Malik Jasim Abbas said
Yusra Ambreen, a student of NUST, who plays the lead character of Maryam and has previously acted in plays at her university, said she felt “honoured to be portraying a real Pakistani woman, who puts up with enormous pressure from society and her own family,” she said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 8th, 2015.